Food Baby: Shame Burger!

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Shame Burger!

The mighty Shame Burger at the Wishing Well Tavern. Ten ounces of beef, two slices of american cheese, a slab of house made scrapple, a fried egg, a buttered and grilled brioche roll - it's nothing less than patriotism on a plate. If you plan on waving the red white and blue and slapping communism in the face by downing this beast of a burger you better wear your eatin' pants. And don't plan on doing much else for the rest of the day.

It's such an overload of protein that you might trick your body into thinking it's training for a 12 rounder with Apollo Creed. And while I wouldn't enter this into our ongoing burger challenge, it certainly deserves street cred just for originality and sheer gluttony. The burger patty was good, not great. Seared nicely, but cooked just shy of well done when I had asked for medium. The housemade scrapple tasted like it was straight from Lancaster County with good spicing and the perfect texture. Would loved for it to have been fried crispier though, to give some contrast the beef. It kind of all mushes together when you bite through it. Basically the same story with the fried egg too - the yolk should be left runny, to mix in with the burger & scrapple for that extra layer of indulgence.

The best thing on the plate were the onion rings. One inch thick rings of perfectly fried onion, soft and tender inside and divinely crispy and golden brown on the outside. The onion inside is so tender, in fact, that when you bite in you can taste a little caramelization and it doesn't pull out the whole ring from within the batter. Don't you just hate when that happens? These rivaled, if not bested, the rings at PYT. They are that good.

beef +cheese + scrapple + egg + bun = SHAME

Today was not the day for the Shame Burger Challenge. And that day might never come. To win the challenge, you need to down two double Shame Burgers - thats four patties, four pieces of scrapple, 8 slices of cheese, four fried eggs, two buns, two orders of fries and two beers - in under 45 minutes. Thirteen people have done it, with the current record being just under 5 minutes - good god. Although getting my picture on the wall would be pretty sweet, it's not worth the damage this would do to my insides. Even I draw the line somewhere. I'm content to gaze at that Wall of Shame with a little envy, pay regular price for my single Shame Burger and not start planning my triple bypass surgery.